


Room For One More Troubled Soul

by Coyacoonadillo



Series: The Young Punk Chronicles [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Blackwatch Sombra | Olivia Colomar, Cybernetic maintenance, Explicit Language, Fluff, Gen, Reyes Strays, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26079082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coyacoonadillo/pseuds/Coyacoonadillo
Summary: Sombra and McCree finally address the tension of attempted murder, and attempt to find common ground while performing cybernetic maintenance.
Relationships: Jesse McCree & Sombra | Olivia Colomar
Series: The Young Punk Chronicles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1405540
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Room For One More Troubled Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after the events of Young Punks ch 14, but can be read as a standalone.

Sombra crept into the medical bay late in the evening. O'Deorain was off somewhere, ranting about ethics and science and all the fiddly little details that made her head swim. Who fucking cares what format you submit a paper in, the minutiae of your stupid procedures. At least tonight, somebody else was the victim of the wild doctor's animated soap box. And with such a lull in official activity, there was little need for the medical bay. Sombra could be alone. 

She checked the door again. This wasn't off limits per se, but she had no interest in explaining her behavior and presence to nosy agents. All clear. 

It took a moment to scout the room and find the equipment she wanted. After all, surgery was not the most common use of this bay. Satisfied with her choices, she shoved the equipment across the floor to a neat, empty bed. For everything else she could throw at Moira O'Deorain, Sombra had to admit she kept a well ordered working space. 

Sombra leapt up to the exam bed with catlike grace, landing delicately on her toes before adjusting to a more comfortable position, her legs crossed. With a careless gesture, she drew up a violet, glowing screen before her face, largely blank. Humming to herself, she dragged her fingertips across each piece of selected equipment. They each glowed soft purple from their indicator lights. Good, all according to plan. 

Taking a final steadying breath, Sombra drew her hair up into her left fist and tucked her chin. Keeping a close eye on the readouts and images flashing across her screen, she twisted and flicked the fingers of her free hand in a subtle, delicate dance. Behind her the machines whirred into deliberate motion, a motion she monitored like a hawk at the edge of a lake. A metallic click, and a sharp pinch that made her lip curl, and she was in business. 

Carefully, she set to work adjusting, cleaning, repairing, and tightening the cybernetics on her skull, one piece at a time. Each join scrutinized, each screw carefully examined. Wallowed heads and worn threads prompted replacement, with fresh components sorted into neat zipped baggies drawn from her pockets. The base laboratory had been rather well stocked. 

The process was awkward, operating a hacked machine while watching the back of her head on her screen. She shifted the screen's position, shielded from the observing camera by her body. The repeating effect of a camera filming its own output made her nauseous, which did not lend itself well to delicate repair and maintenance work. 

The process was slow, with slight overcorrections knocking pieces askew or poking with implements sharp enough to draw blood. Her tongue peeked out between pursed lips, her brow furrowed, as if this would improve her concentration. 

A concentration only broken by shattering glass and a muttered " _ shit. _ " She directed the tools away from her cybernetics and slammed the screen closed, spinning around to see the intruder. The motion knocked the curved cover of one of the skull components to the floor with another clatter. 

Jesse McCree stood frozen in the entry of the medical bay, his gaze jumping between Sombra at her most secretive and vulnerable, and the mess of glass shards lying shattered at his feet, remains of a beaker or vial of some kind. 

Clapping her hand over the exposed circuitry on the side and back of her head, Sombra hissed, "What the  _ fuck _ are you doing here?"

This seemed to unstick Jesse's thoughts from whatever loop had caught them. "I could ask you the same," he said with an inquisitive tilt to his head. Sombra realized with a start she had never seen him hatless like this for more than a breath or two. How late was it, anyways?

"Well clearly I'm busy, so leave." 

Jesse nonchalantly nudged the broken glass under the nearby cabinet, hardly taking his eyes off the other agent. "You've been actin’ weird an’ cagey all day," he stated. "And then you tried to sneak out of your room.” He crossed his arms with a shit-eating grin. “You ain’t quite so sneaky as you thought.”

“Or you’re just a creepy stalker,” Sombra said. She impatiently glanced around the room, waiting for the cowboy to just leave already. 

“I didn’t follow you here if that’s what you’re thinkin’. Honest.” He put both hands up as if to prove it. “I was just wanderin’ around and saw lights come on from in here. Can’t blame a man for bein’ curious.” 

Sombra didn’t miss the pointed note of the last word and scoffed. “Then why are you up?”

“Again, I could ask you the same if you’re gonna be so damn defensive ‘bout it.” When Sombra didn’t respond and leveled a glare at him, he bit his lip, then sighed. “Alright, so I don’t sleep so good sometimes. I wander. Figure the same for you, if you’re up and around too. Just more…habitually nosy than me, I guess.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Look, you heard Reyes, same as me. We’re on the same team now. We might at least act like it.” He paused, clearly expecting some kind of response. “We both got left for dead by people we thought we trusted. Ain’t that why you’re here, too?”

He waited, fixing Sombra with a pointed stare that mirrored her own glare. 

“...I guess,” she said, prickling at the thought of sharing more vulnerabilities than she was by virtue of sitting like this in the middle of maintenance in the middle of the night. 

“She speaks!” He clutched at his heart dramatically, then leaned on the wall behind him. “Figure you won’t mind if I hang around, then?”

“I’d rather you leave me alone.”

“We’ll be alone together. You be alone over there, I’ll be alone over here. Oh and,” Jesse pushed off the wall, stooping to pick up the component cover from where it had skittered near his feet on the ground. “You dropped this.” He reached out, offering the piece to Sombra. 

She ground her teeth, then snatched the piece out of his hand, leaving the circuitry on her skull exposed. Holding it close to her face, she examined the cover for damage with a worried eye. No scratches or chips, but a little dusty. Easily fixed with a quick swipe across the hem of her shirt. “It has to be late. Why aren’t you going back to your damn room?” She didn’t spare him a look, trying to look as nonchalant and merely inconvenienced as she could when this tense and ready to bolt.

He shrugged. “You said you had the same problem as me. Figure that means we might be able to help each other, seein’ as we’re teammates. So. What are you  _ actually _ doin’?”

Of course he kept at it. Her lip curled in annoyance and spite that threatened to boil over in defense. 

But of course, she couldn’t blame him. Sombra was just as curious, if not far moreso. Just less blunt about it. 

Sombra took a deep breath then looked up, rolling her shoulders and forcing herself to relax, if only a little. “Cybernetic maintenance. It’s precise, and important, and this is the first time I’ve done it since…" She bit her lip, considering. "I’m just used to having help with it. Satisfied?”

She could practically watch the questions flash through his head, eyes bright and overeager. He shifted, straightened, and shifted again, as though the wall he leaned on wasn’t comfortable enough, settling into a caricature of a cool, level-headed, scruffy-bearded idiot. “Ya know I uh. I used to do most of the maintenance for Deadlock’s bikes.” A pause. “Ya know, the motorcycles.”

“Fascinating. Be alone over there, or whatever,” she said flatly. Even if he wasn’t going to leave, she couldn’t just not finish the maintenance she’d set out to do. “And don’t touch anything.”

With a series of gestures, Sombra summoned her screen back into existence and the commandeered equipment whirred back to life. She could feel Jesse’s eyes burning into the back of her neck as she directed the machines about their business, poking around the exposed circuitry. A stray poke pricked her skin and she hissed through her teeth. She heard Jesse shift and start to say something, then presumably bite his tongue. She huffed, then continued painstakingly slowly. After a silent two minutes, she pricked skin again, drawing blood and biting back a venomous stream of curses as it dripped warm and slow down her scalp. Jesse shifted uncomfortably again, then spoke up.

“Are you sure you don’t want help?”

Fighting the urge to snap back some variant of “fuck you, get the fuck out of here,” Sombra turned to look at him again. 

Neither of them spoke, Sombra trying to find something less vindictive to say, and Jesse apparently tripping over himself trying to find something intelligent to spout.

“Are you sure you don’t  _ need _ help?” He raised one finger before she could retort. “It ain’t a bad thing, okay? I know you’re not askin’ and won’t ask, I’m offerin’. There’s no point in you stayin’ up all night tryin’ to do something that’d be easier with help.”

Again, Sombra scowled, but he had a point. Like hell, she’d ever admit it, but he had a point. She closed her eyes and drew her hair back up and out of the way. “Fine. If you’re gonna help, get over here. I may as well make sure you do it right.”

Jesse startled, as if he hadn’t expected her to take up his offer. "It'll be fine. We're good partners, remember?" He hustled over to the bed and leaned close, so close his breath fluttered the hair left loose from her haphazard updo. Too close. 

When Sombra fixed him with a warning glare, she knew he had already gotten the picture before she even moved. He took a small step backward, his hands up in a placating gesture. "If you can't see without breathing down my neck, I may as well do it myself."

"I can see fine, I just ain't seen cybernetics quite like this before."

"They're custom. And they're not too complicated for you to figure out. Here."

Sombra walked Jesse through removing a plate, inspecting the circuitry beneath, cleaning the connectors, and piecing it back together, all while watching through her holographic screen from the vantage point of a hacked camera. Jesse was almost uncharacteristically quiet during the demonstration, aside from clarifying questions about the technique and placement of particular components. He learned fast, to Sombra's relief, though she would never mention it. After relinquishing the task to the cowboy alone, Sombra basked in the near normalcy of the chore and ran diagnostics, just to be sure no hardware was nudged out of place. For a while, they worked in silence. 

"Have you worked on cybernetics before?" Sombra asked with a feigned nonchalance. 

"Hm?"

"You said you hadn't seen cybernetics like mine before. So have you worked on other cybernetics before, or was it just motorcycles?" 

Without breaking the rhythm of his work, Jesse huffed in mock indignation. "I've worked on more than  _ just _ motorcycles. But nah, no cybernetics before this."

Sombra would have guessed otherwise, from the confidence of movement and steady hands she watched on the screen. "Did anybody in your gang have cybernetics?"

"The sandy environment don't quite lend itself to moving mechanical parts, and ain't too kind to electronics. Not too many nonessential cybernetics out there, in general. One fellow in the gang though, joined not long before I-- we--" he paused. 

"Before the canyon incident." Sombra supplied, impatient. "Continue?"

"Well he didn't join too long ago, well he had him a cybernetic leg. Figure if it was an improvement thing, he'd get it on both sides, and he looked scarred enough for it to a been an injury." He shrugged. "Didn't let anybody get a good look at it, though. So wait," he said, breaking pace to lightly tap a plate he had just reattached. "You tellin me  _ you _ , Miss 'I don't trust anybody and it's every hacker for herself,' got help with this from your gang, regularly?" 

Sombra rolled her eyes and gestured to the machinery she had dragged over and hacked. "Do you think we had this kind of equipment? Of course I got help, dumbass."

"Pardon my disbelief, seein as you're flinchin every time I move back here. Sit still," he admonished, oddly gentle in tone. 

"I'm not flinching," she replied. 

"Yeah, you are."

"Am not!"

"You are, and if you cut it out I can work faster."

Sombra grumbled but conceded. 

"So how did this work before, in Los Muertos?" Jesse trundled onward, not letting bickering stand in his way. 

"There were...rules. Threats," Sombra said, weighing her words carefully before speaking. "If someone so much as scratched my cybernetics, they stood to lose their fingers. I'm an asset, and expensive to replace."

Jesse paused, and a prickle went up Sombra's spine. She watched in the camera feed as his shoulders rose slightly, like they did when he wanted to speak, then he shook his head. He resumed his work, now on the opposite side of her head. She shifted the fistful of hair out of the way and they sat in silence for several long minutes. 

"So," Jesse ventured, "why'd you join a gang?"

"You first, vaquero," she said flatly. 

"Alright, alright. Very  _ intelligence agent  _ of you," he said with a chuckle. "I was a kid, doing small time crime solo. Hadn't had anybody left for a while or anything to my name. So when this other kid, not much older'n me, who I'd done some bigger jobs with on occasion, finds me and says she's startin a proper operation, I was intrigued. A place to sleep, steadier work, bigger returns, people I could trust…"

"Did you trust them?" Sombra asked, incredulous. 

"Bout as far as I could throw em. But it was nice. A far cry from stealing chickens in the dead of night."

Sombra snorted at the mental image of Jesse McCree chasing after squawking chickens, hat akimbo and gangly arms outstretched. 

"It was good, for a while. We started doin bigger jobs, and I didn't have the luxury to worry who would get hurt. I was part of Deadlock, one of Ashe's boys, and I would eat, work, sleep, and see the sunrise next dawn." He took a deep, surprisingly shaky breath. There was something that he still kept to himself, something he wasn't sharing. "Alrighty, your turn, Sombra."

Sombra silently thanked the circumstance, that Jesse was behind her and couldn't see her eyes narrow as she tried to fill in his blanks. "I wasn't too different from you," she started. "I was a child of the omnic crisis, so I don't remember much of mamá. But I very clearly remember struggling with the other children, because the governor would give no aid." Unbidden came the memory of being glared at like vermin, shouts of disgust, scurrying away to the safety of shadows. She squeezed her eyes tight, willing it away. 

"So I learned to hack, and break, and sabotage, and I took the governor down."

Jesse gave a low whistle. "Damn, nice."

"Los Muertos thought so, too," she said with a wry grin. "They offered food, shelter, resources, and protection. It's dangerous for me to be alone. I've pissed off too many powerful people."

He nodded. "So that's what Reyes won you over with, isn't it? Not the pardon, but the protection." His tone was confident, matter-of-fact, and for the first time Sombra was truly startled by his intuition. 

She hesitated before responding, "Pretty much, yeah." Why was she telling him so much, so freely? It would be so easy to ignore him, or to run him off with a snap of her fingers and hacked medical equipment. Something about his apparent sincerity was disarming. 

To retain at least a trace of her defenses, she continued dismissively, "Let me guess, he got you by stroking your ego and promising you friends." 

Jesse froze and grew tense. For a heartbeat Sombra wondered if she'd crossed a line, and inched her free hand towards the machines she'd hacked. If there was a confrontation, she had to win. His hands were by her head, her neck, horribly close to vulnerability, but she could move faster, if she dove forward and left she could reach--

"He didn't promise friends," Jesse said, interrupting Sombra's last ditch planning. "He…look, we both got left behind, right? We were abandoned at the drop of a hat when shit went south. He said Blackwatch doesn't do that.  _ We _ don't do that."

She scoffed. "I'll believe it when I see it."

He shrugged, then went back to work. "It's not like I can make you believe something you don't want to believe," he said in that I-don't-give-a-shit kind of way that shows you actually do. 

It's remarkable, she thought, how much they've both changed. Both gangsters at each other's throats, captured and recruited by an international special operations organization. Both trained, both trusted, mind bogglingly enough. They had been forced to work together and fight side by side, and now with no such obligations, they worked together. Voluntarily. Blackwatch offered a banner of truce under which so many people could just...get along. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if the world outside was like that, could be like that, even for her. 

It would be nice. 

But no.

The moment she first took a stand, made her first enemy, planted into her skull the silicon and chrome which made her a tool, a weapon…from that moment her fate was set. 

Still, the thought gnawed like a hungry dog, not helped by Jesse's blind optimism in the face of her wariness. She had every preparation and contingency plan, watching her counterpart's every move with the discerning eye of a general through her hacked security footage. She read every twitch and gesture for malice and schemes against her. Every muscle tight as a bowstring should he make a wrong move, should she have to fly into action against him or away from him. All the while, he sat cross legged behind her, elbows akimbo and oddly hatless, tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth as he furrowed his brow in intense concentration. No airs of strength or aloof judgement. No show of readiness. Just another kid, extending kindness for the sake of it. 

The dog that growls and snaps at the hand outstretched is not fed, is not cherished. 

Sombra felt very alone.

So very alone. 

Despite the help, despite the kindness, despite the apparent camaraderie offered by Blackwatch, offered here in this moment, she felt  _ so alone _ . 

She'd trusted before, had friends before, and was left alone in the bottom of a canyon to fend for herself. Blackwatch offered protection, but the vulnerability of friendship was a risk she had been unwilling to take. If it was even offered. 

As Jesse's steady work moved from her scalp to the base of her neck, she let her hair fall over her left shoulder. Her fingers absentmindedly carded through the eye-searing strands as she thought in  _ might _ ,  _ could,  _ and  _ would _ . 

Jesse was humming something rhythmic and repetitive, barely loud enough to hear. 

"Do you think," Sombra asked without warning, "if things hadn't gone the way they'd gone, that we'd be friends?"

The humming stopped. The hands stopped. 

"We could be friends now," he said simply. Then he resumed working. 

There was a beat. 

Two beats. 

Sombra stammered, "How-- why-- what the fuck do you mean? We tried to kill each other."

"So? A lot's changed since then." 

"How can we even trust each other? Isn't that what this kind of shit is supposed to be built on?"

"Well, Sombra, I did my fuckin damndest to shoot you then and now you're lettin me work on your bot bits, so I'd say that's a sight of improvement." Jesse's tone was flat and unimpressed. 

Sombra inhaled sharply. Fuck, he had a point. By any measure, this was a stupid and dangerous choice. But she couldn't help but think this was alright. 

"You didn't go soft, if that's what you're thinkin." Jesse said cheerfully. "If I'd actually wanted to off you I'd have done it by now. And same with you. You're controlling all the machines in this room, aren't you?"

"...why do you think so?" 

"Well that trick you did with Genji was pretty cool, so I figured-- aw, who am I kiddin, it's the purple glow all the lights have now. Duh. But seriously, either of us could have killed the other pretty easily in the last hour. But we didn't. Because we're on the same team now."

Sombra sighed. "Yeah, yeah, Blackwatch is all one big happy family that does secret paramilitary operations," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "How did you come to that conclusion so quickly, oh great peacemaker?" Her face pinched and voice grew reedy as she spoke with mocking reverence. 

"Because I'm older and smarter," he retorted. 

"Not that much older."

"I'm plenty older, shut up!"

"You're not that much older, and we've been here the same amount of time, pendejo." She twisted to look over her shoulder at him and make damn certain he could see her roll her eyes. 

"Hey hey, hold still!" He flicked Sombra on the ear in warning. Ignoring her protests he said, "I may be almost done but I'm still workin. Quit it! And even if I'm not that much older-- put that hacked machine back where it came from or so help me-- I've had more time alive to think about shit. So I've-- Jesus fuckin' Christ, Sombra, I don't need you remote controllin a camera here, it's already fiddly enough-- I've got some conclusions."

“And what, pray tell, might those conclusions be?” She tapped her nails impatiently on her knee. 

Jesse hummed, thinking, before responding. “First, sleep and eat when you can, ‘cause you don’t know when you can’t.” Sombra nodded in agreement. “Second, don’t waste time wishing, ‘specially wishing the past were different. Can’t change the past, and all you’ll get from doin’ that is  _ sad _ .” His voice dropped, tinged with unnamed longing, before ramping back up to cheerful assertion. “Thirdly, try and find people you can care about. Failing that, find allies you can rely on. How’s that sound?”

Sombra mulled it over, then felt a pinch as the last cover for her spinal augmentation snapped back into place. “Seems good. Let me know how it works.”

Jesse sighed and sat back. “Well, you’re done at least. I’m fuckin’ beat,” he said with an exaggerated yawn as Sombra turned around to face him. 

“Then you should probably go back to bed. You might have an easier time now,” she said. 

“Yeah, I guess any kind of work is liable to make me tired. You oughta hit the hay too, ya know?” Jesse tipped his head, undisguised concern in his eyes. “Reyes likes startin us early.”

Sombra shrugged. “I might stay up a little longer. I’ve got this room to clean, systems to check, stuff to think about, I guess.”

A shit-eating grin split the cowboy’s face. “Thinkin about my advice?” 

“Fuck you, no,” Sombra snapped almost on reflex, surprising herself with the venom in her voice. “I’ve got other shit to think about.” 

“Sure, sure,” he said, getting up. “Spooky spy shit and ones and zeros.” He walked toward the door, then paused in the frame to look back over his shoulder. “Definitely that. Have fun thinkin about mainframes. See you at breakfast!” 

He disappeared into the dark hallway, leaving Sombra to think about things she couldn’t change, and allies--  _ friends _ she might have.

**Author's Note:**

> He's humming "The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie" because I accidentally left it on loop while writing


End file.
